StarControl – a pictorial history

Yesterday, I wrote about a hodge-podge tabletop RPG I cobbled together based on the 1992 video game StarControl 2. Here’s some pictures from all of the few gaming sessions we had. I explain a lot about what we did with the pictures.

Here is the image I used to make the campaign map. I printed it out at about 30″ square and we used a ruler to determine how far away star systems were, which impacted resources used in fuel expenditure as well as ticking away precious time before the Ur-Quan destroy the galaxy.

Surprise and terror! This Spathi is the first new alien race the Crew encountered. His name is Spathi Captain Fwiffo and he is an absurdly cowardly creature. I used these little color stand-ups to represent a starship’s viewscreen when communicating with other ships. In the foreground is an expendable Crew Member walking through the halls of a small, human-built escort ship.

This is a villainous species, the Ilwrath, and my hand. The Crew parley with the creature a bit before opening fire. Once the battle is over, the enemy vessel is salvaged for scrap.

One of the players doodled this. It represents the ship’s Planet Lander, the vehicle that does all the collecting of minerals. The players named it the S.S. Planet Raper. The umbrella is its “weather shield”.

This is the main starship of the campaign, the S.S. Space Lightning. Each of these tiles can be bought at starbase and provides a different benefit; for example, the empty tile is the cargo bay and the blue tiles are engines.

A doodle of the S.S. Space Lightning. I love how much this reminds me of the Millennium Falcon, in its junked and asymmetrical look. Notice the UHAUL indicating the cargo bay.

Another doodle interpreting the look of the Space Lightning, this time much more sleak.

Here is our ruler used to determine astronomical distances, set against the campaign star map. 10 light years = 1 Fuel Unit = 1 day travel time

An intergalactic space trader, Captain Aquamarine of the Melnorme. They are found in certain star systems and offer technological upgrades and fuel for sale. The Trade Masters are always interested in trading for new genetic information, which the Crew has gained via capturing exotic alien lifeforms that are randomly generated on certain planets.

Another shot of the Space Lightning, before the second engine was bought.

Some doodles on one of the player’s character sheets.

The planet lander, its hit point (the glass beads), and the scientific scan readouts of the planets in a star system. There is a lot of dice rolling involved in populating a star system, so we devised a method of each player being responsible for populating one specific task.

It’s a trap!The starbase is where the ship comes to repair and upgrade, unloading its raw minerals to be processed.